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The miles fly by. Work flies by. And when it all does, this blog just sits here. Anyway, in no particular order: 1) Office Olympics today - or at least the 1600 meter run - which is the only event (I'd argue) not 100% based on luck. Anywho, last year I won it in 5:52. This year, my goal time was 5:30. So, I had my Garmin on lap pace and chased it around the track @ 5:27-5:28. Except --- it was off by .06 miles, which meant I actually finished in 5:44. 8 seconds faster than last year. 1st place (though my buddy Dave was definitely holding back) again. Most important? VDOT says this equals a 3:08 marathon. 2) Speaking of marathon, the training's going well. Later this week is the 4th of 5 twenty milers. Last weekend was 15 @ 7:48 pace. Things seem to be spinning toward a 3:10ish. 3) Blood sugars have been behaving real well. I keep the pump on a low basal for the long runs, sip Gatorade G2, and take a gel every 5 miles. So far, so good. 4) Last week at a big tradeshow, our company s…

So yesterday was the Harrisburg Half Marathon - basically a mini-version of my key race, the November Harrisburg Marathon. It starts in the same place and goes the same directions, just not as far. So it serves as a nice dress rehearsal.

Last year, I ran this one in 1:40 flat as a marathon pace run and promptly freaked out since it didn't feel "easy" to me. So three week's later I ran a different half marathon pretty close to all out in 1:34:32, which fixed my head in time for the marathon.

This year, the plan was to have a nice PR here -- in the 1:31-1:32 range -- so that my head was in good shape heading into the final weeks of marathon training.

And then, during last week's speed workout I hurt my shin, pretty much in the same place where I always hurt it. I went into holycrapIneedtofixthisormyseasonsgoingtohell mode, spending the entire week icing it, wrapping it and putting smelly creams on it. And mostly, I trained through it, though last week was a scheduled …

This past Saturday was my second of five 20 milers in the marathon plan (out of 5) and also marked the last day of August. Random thoughts and observations:

1) August finished with just under 183 miles - my highest count ever - a full 8% more miles than July, my previous high.

2) However, August was also a month w/ 5 weekends and if you're doing a long run on the weekend, that helps. I actually missed four workouts during August: 2 due to UK travels and 2 due to small injuries I wanted to heal. Which they did.

3) However, none of the 4 missed workouts were KEY workouts - they were all recovery runs.

4) August of 2007 - on the FIRST plan - I ran just over 130 miles, so this year I ran nearly 40% more miles.

5) More importantly, my key workouts are better than I did last year. My tempo runs and 1 interval workout were better than my FIRST results in 07 and while my long run paces are slower than last year, they're only a tiny bit slower.